Roll The Bones: Chicken Legs

While late-night workouts were not ideal, I was too self conscious to lift during peak hours at the gym. Throughout my childhood, kids teased me about my chicken legs, which are admittedly fowl, and it destroyed my self image and fomented disdain for my body. I convinced myself that becoming big, strong, and intimidating would change my life for the better, but since I couldn’t risk being seen by my peers as I struggled to learn weight lifting, I trained tirelessly in the dark of the night.

No matter the number of leg presses or calf raises I did, my chicken legs would not grow. The rest of my body, however, did become much stronger. Self loathing and dysmorphia began to fade, and my love for fitness and the way it made me feel quickly became an obsession.

For about two years in college, I worked as a strength and conditioning consultant at the university’s recreation centers, where I walked around in search of sweat-drenched treadmills that needed to be wiped clean or hungover frat boys who needed a spot.

After graduation I started writing about fitness for Maxim, using my firsthand experiences to help other men feel confident enough to walk into a crowded gym. As much as I enjoyed writing about the exercise tips and tricks that had helped me so much, it felt somewhat disingenuous because my fitness routine had completely fallen apart due to an exhausting and unpredictable work schedule; I needed help, too.

That’s when I met an incredible personal trainer who changed my entire approach to fitness: Mike Coval. The owner of a gym in Ann Arbor, Michigan and the author of The Physician Vitality Playbook, Coval trained me into the best shape of my life.

Every day just after dawn, I arrived at Coval Fitness with a hot coffee in hand, spent a few minutes snuggling with the gym dog, Calvin, and then started stretching out. Each week Coval wrote a different workout program for me; no two weeks were the same, and each new movement was built on something I had learned the week prior.

During each exercise he studied my form and my movements, making small corrections that had huge positive impacts on my ability to lift more weight; soon I was back-squatting 350 pounds. Because of Coval’s expertise, my body became healthier, more balanced, and stronger than ever.

Unfortunately it didn’t last. Life went sideways after my dad died and my job moved me from Michigan to California. My muscles shrank, my workouts stopped altogether, and a decade passed before I went back to the gym with a beer belly and a pair of torn-to-hell shoulders, which had been injured by violent muscle contractions during a grand mal seizure that nearly killed me in my sleep.

Today, my strength and stamina are pitiful, and progress is as slow as it is painful, but it feels better than ever to be at the gym. Diligently and patiently going through each movement of each exercise, I listen to my muscles as I try to remember what I have learned but haven’t used in many years. Some days I can manage only one set of lightweight overhead shoulder presses before my rotator cuff starts to scream. As I walk the little dumbbells back to the weight rack, I remind myself: “take your time.”

I am learning what it means to have a healthy relationship with my body. Fitness was never about self love and care, but rather a means of slowly shaping and molding myself into a more desirable person. As a wounded and self-conscious boy who needed to be accepted by others, I craved the daily ritual of becoming a more impressive and intimidating version of myself through repetitive heavy lifting.

Now all I want is to be healthier and get the most out of this body and this life, and all I have to do is show up, listen to my body, and do the best I can to stay in shape, every day until I am one of the naked old men in the locker room.